Purism's 'Librem 5 USA' Smartphone Achieves Major New Shipping Milestone

Purism posted an announcement Thursday about their privacy-focused "Librem 5 USA" smartphones. "New orders placed today will ship within our standard 10-business-day window." The Librem 5 USA now joins the Librem Mini and Librem 14 as a post-Just In Time product, one where instead of relying on Just In Time supply chains to manufacture a product just as we need it, we have invested in maintaining much larger inventories so that we can better absorb future supply chain issues that may come our way.

For anyone who is new to the product, the Librem 5 USA is our premium phone that shares the same hardware design and features as our mass-produced Librem 5, but with electronics we make in the USA using a separate electronics supply chain that sources from US suppliers whenever possible. This results in a tighter, more secure supply chain for the Librem 5 USA.

The Librem 5 USA uses the same PureOS as our other computers and so it runs the same desktop Linux applications you might be used to, just on a small screen.

PureOS on the Librem 5 USA demonstrates real convergence, where the device becomes more than just a phone, it becomes a full-featured pocket-sized computer that can act like a desktop when connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, or even a laptop (or tablet!) when connected to a laptop docking station. All of your files and all of your software remains the same and follows you where you go. Applications just morph from the smaller screen to the larger screen when docked, just like connecting a external monitor to a laptop.

Everyone who has backed the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA projects hasn't just supported the production of the hardware itself, they have also supported a massive, multi-year software development effort to bring the traditional Linux desktop to a phone form-factor. Projects such as Phosh (the GUI), Phoc (the Compositor), Squeekboard (the Keyboard), Calls (for calling), Chats (for texting and messaging), and libhandy/libadwaita (libraries to make GTK applications adaptive) all required massive investment and many of these projects have already been moved to the GNOME infrastructure to better share our effort with a larger community.

We are delighted to see that many other mobile projects have recognized the quality of our efforts and adopted our software into their own projects....

The Librem 5 USA was designed for longevity and because we support right to repair, we also offer a number of spare parts in our shop, including replacement modems so you can make sure you support all the cellular bands in a particular continent, replacement batteries for when you ultimately wear out your existing battery, and plenty of other spare parts that haven't had sufficient demand to post formally on our shop (yet). If you need a spare part that isn't yet on the shop, just ask.

wow

[drinkypoo]

If I order a real phone, I can have it in three days.

If I order a Librem 5, they won't even be thinking about shipping it to me by then.

To them, this is a milestone? It's more like a red flag.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

Sounds like someone threw in a bunch of marketing buzzwords. As the last several years have demonstrated JIT is highly susceptible to minor disruptions. However how does this company aim to overcome the immediate problem that supplies of major components are experiencing problems right now?

Re:

[dos1]

It says "post-JIT", which is the case exactly because of what you mentioned.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

Yes and the current situation is that major components are in short supply. Does that mean we will have to wait years for this company to be viable? I am sure that other companies right now are changing their supply structure.

Re:

[dos1]

I'm not sure you're understanding the point of the article? It says "we achieved shipping parity for this product, acquired stock and therefore moved away from a troubled JIT model".

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

I don't think YOU understand that "acquired stock" when there is short supply of everything means one of two things. 1) Their parts are desired by no one. 2) Their required stock levels are so small that they really cannot compete in the long term.

Re:

[dos1]

You're probably missing the context. Because of shortages, it took several months to acquire that stock since L5USA started shipping, and the regular L5 is still shipping backorders from years ago (with predicted shipping parity at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023) despite of its production starting in late 2020.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

You're probably missing the context. Because of shortages, it took several months to acquire that stock since L5USA started shipping, and the regular L5 is still shipping backorders from years ago (with predicted shipping parity at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023) despite of its production starting in late 2020.

Most of the parts have not changed since 2019 and even then they were not close to leading edge. Here are the parts list:

CPU: i.MX 8M Family - Arm® Cortex®-A53 [nxp.com]. Main uses are lower powered embedded electronic devices or appliances. Personally I think this CPU is not one that any other mobile manufacturer would use for a phone.

Memory: Micron 3GB LPDDR4-3200 DRAM. First launched in 2014 and many phone makers have moved on to LPDDR4X, LPDDR5, and as of last year LPDDR5X.

Modem: Broadmobi BM818 I do

As a Libre 5 owner:

[jerzee]

The phone is far far far from prime time. The battery lasts 5 hrs in standby, I've had as little as 30 minutes when running video. The camera is a joke, all manual adjustments.

They are so committed to privacy, you cannot even install Chrome browser, but Firefox is ok, and the built in browser is soo s-l-o-w. My phone, my choice, right?!?

I purchased the phone hoping for at least a good phone, ended up with something that I need to contact tech support about monthly just to be told "reflash the phone and send us the log files". I'm still using my Android phone although I planned at this point to switch to my Libre 5, not happening anytime soon.

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

I have read other posts that echo your complaints online. In the past I have advocated for these phones but when I was looking to buy one myself I found out just how badly they perform, and nixed the project. I am sticking with my dumbphone for now.

I would like a phone that is google and apple free right out of the box, with no hackery needed, and a design that is committed to privacy. I realize that the cell phone towers track your location. They must, it's part of how they work. I am accepting that l

Re:

[mr_jrt]

Not exactly out of the box, but buy an Xperia and flash Sailfish onto it? Works great, been running it for years.

Re:

[dos1]

Please keep in mind that many of those online echoes are based on outdated impressions on software that kept rapidly changing over last years. I'm one of the people working on it, and I'm using it on my Librem 5 as a daily driver, and while it sure can be rough at some edges, it serves me really well already.

While I wouldn't recommend it to everyone just yet, the groups of people that I would get wider with each quarter. I'd say that it was already suitable for people who consider themselves GNU/Linux hacke

Re: As a Libre 5 owner:

[jerzee]

But it is far from mainstream ready, even you said for people who consider themselves gun hackers. Now, I've been using Linux since the 90's and am fairly well versed, but I shouldn't need that ability for a daily driver.

While I'm glad I supported the phone and I hope for the best of the phone and company, I am a bit disappointed in the phone's performance and the lack of abilities. My phone, my choice. Then I should be about to choose any OS compatible browser I choose. Just try installing Chrome some time

Wow

[backslashdot]

$2000 for a $125 phone? Come on man. That's a 15 to 20x premium. You can buy 15 equivalent South Korean phones for that price. Or TWENTY Chinese phones. It can't even beat the $125 Samsung A03s which is expensive for its class.
Compare the specs here:
Libre5: https://shop.puri.sm/shop/libr... [shop.puri.sm]
Samsung Galaxy 03s: https://www.gsmarena.com/samsu... [gsmarena.com]

Re:

[dos1]

$125 is more than what its SoC and RAM cost alone. Plus of course there's a significant premium, all software work gets funded from that price (and it's all FLOSS and benefits other devices as well).

Re:

[dos1]

I can run fresh kernels on my phone, stuff like Docker, whole desktop stacks that work well with external displays, and hack on .debs that contain system components however I see fit. There's a huge difference between running Debian chroot on Android and actually running Debian, and personally, I'm not satisfied with the former.

Re:

[SoftwareArtist]

You clearly aren't in the target market for this phone, which is fine, but you can still try to understand the people it's targeted at. This phone is for people who believe in what they're doing and want to support it. They're trying to create a whole new smartphone platform, designed from the ground up to be 100% open source and 100% privacy respecting. For this edition, unlike the much less expensive standard Librem 5, they're also trying to manufacture it with a secure and ethical supply chain. All o

What about the Freedom Phone?

[meiao]

https://www.freedomphone.com/p... [freedomphone.com] It does not claim to be all made in America, but with it you can download the app for your favorite fake news network. But they share the same base principle: pay more for "freedom".

Excessive premium for hohum products

[ekimminau]

When a bookshelf mini PC with 32GB ram and a 1TB SSD and WiFi costs $800, you are obviously over valuing your product. Bump to 64GB for $1100. Its an Intel GPU, basically all the same parts but sourced in the US with "up to 4.9Ghz" speed..

Or you could buy a 2.9Ghz Dell for several hundred less preloaded with Windows instead of PureOS.
https://www.tigerdirect.com/ap... [tigerdirect.com]

$2000 for a phone that you wont get shipped for 10 days. Yawn....